Pilgrims of the Cross
Sponsored
Catholic365 is sponsored by
Road to Purity
It was a cool fall day and we were newly married. We made the pilgrimage to Easton, MA to look for Venerable Father Patrick Peyton’s grave on the Stonehill College campus. After a few back and forths of where to park, we found a spot. The campus was quiet, leaves crunching under our feet as we walked toward the cemetery. There was an anticipation in the air—we were about to meet, in a sense, a man whose life's work was devoted to the very prayer we were learning to love.
Entering the enclosed grave site, we immediately felt we were on holy ground. To see the uniformity of the headstones for this order of priests struck us. They were buried the way they lived–in simplicity. Maybe it was also the stark reminder that one day, we too, would be buried.
It didn’t take long to find Fr. Peyton’s headstone, as it was adorned with rosaries. When we reached it, we couldn’t help but kneel and offer our respects. It only seemed fitting to then pray the rosary. As we moved through the mysteries, surrounded by those well-worn rosaries left by other pilgrims, we felt the weight of what Father Peyton had spent his entire life proclaiming: “The family that prays together stays together.” We weren't just praying a rosary—we were joining a mission. A mission as a couple to entrust our marriage to Jesus through Mary: we would make the rosary the heartbeat of our marriage and, one day, our family.
We both left with the conviction to make the rosary part of our daily prayer as a couple. And we did. Some nights it was peaceful and quiet. Other nights it was exhausted mumbling before bed. But we showed up. The rosary became our rhythm, our anchor, the place where we brought our hopes, fears, intentions, and gratitude. We didn't know it then, but we were building a foundation—not just for our marriage, but for the family we'd one day raise.
Fast forward a few years and the babies have come along! We missed some days and other evenings we prayed only a decade. And that’s when we learned we couldn’t wait for perfect conditions. We learned that a decade at a toddler and infant’s bedside was still beautiful. We wanted them to grow up with this tradition: our family prays the rosary together each evening.
We have since visited Fr. Peyton’s gravesite and Peyton Center with our children. They loved the comic book on Fr. Peyton’s life and that was a bedtime story for months, and still a favorite in our house. They know Father Peyton's story as well as their favorite saints, and pray for him to one day become a saint.
The family rosary is our defense against the chaos of the world, the protection over our home, the way we teach our children to intercede for others, pray for those who hurt us, meditate on the mysteries, and to go to Mary with all our needs. When we pray together, we're not just reciting words. We're inviting Jesus and Mary into our living room. We're building a domestic church, one Hail Mary at a time.
And when I think back to that fall day at Father Peyton's grave—young, newly married, full of hope—I'm grateful we said yes. Not just to the rosary, but to the life it would build: slower, more intentional, more grace-filled. A life where, even on the hardest days, we gather. We pray. We stay together.
Sometimes when we’re feeling tired and want to get everyone to bed, the kids remind us to pray our family rosary quoting Fr. Peyton, “the family that prays together stays together!” They love these one liners, but more importantly they love the tradition we established and the tangible peace from praying the rosary. That's the gift of the family rosary. That's what Father Peyton knew.
